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Here’s the update like I promised. It’s kinda long so being nice and potting it under the cut. The timeline for this will likely not be at all liner, so bear with me. My brain is very overworked so if I missed typos I apologize now. Thanks to everyone who popped in to say hello. I will try to not be such a stranger. :)
I started college this fall, as many of you know, returning to education at the young age of 40. I’d wanted to go into ASL interpreting, but because of my Carpel Tunnel in both wrists I was advised by the woman running the program to look into another career path. I admit ASL was really hard, and I thought it was because I suck at learning languages (more LD frustrations), but I learned near the end of the fall semester from a couple of the ASL tutors that I had the hardest ASL professor in the department…would have been nice to know earlier in the semester, but I still made it out of the class with a C- (.13 away from a “C” man that sucked)
Beside the ASL class struggle, the rest of my fall classes went well. I have always floundered in science, but I made it through my natural science class (Plants in Today's World) with a A-, and got A’s in the rest of my classes (Grp Proc & Civic Engagement, Multicultural America, College Writing and Research. Even managed a A- in Communication 101 even though as a Winterim class the work load was like drowning in information for the whole several weeks of it. The Multicultural America class was amazing, though often I found myself way above the class discussion. It helped that the professor and I had our own side conversations outside the class. She joked many time about me being more like her TA than her student.
For the College Writing and Research class we had to write two essay for a portfolio that would go to a review panel to be graded. It was heartening when not only did my portfolio pass, but my professor sent me an email about how one of the judges urged that I submit one of my essay to the essay contest the run every year…the judge was the person who heads the contest. I did submit my essay, titled "Beyond Duality: Exploring Two-Spirit Identities Within North American Indian Culture and Their Ongoing Struggle for Acceptance in Contemporary Western Society." For the Virginia Burke essay contest. This April I was awarded 1st place in the English 102 category, and read a large chunk of my essay aloud to a ton of people I didn’t know. Scary!
The coolest part of the award ceremony was having all these professor come up to me and talk about how much my essay touched them, even inspired them. They seemed disappointed to learn I was not an English major as they had assumed I was. Wow. What wonders a few good editors can do *grin* Thank you Professor Schoeffel, and Professor Ogdun, and Professor Schumacher! I’d never won a real award for anything before, and the mind blowing part was on the way to the Virginia Burke event I pulled a letter out of the mail from the American Indian Student Services office announcing in two week I was being awarded for academic achievement and campus services. Sure, getting an award for my essay was amazing, getting recognition from the intertribal community was beyond words.
Now, what I haven’t mentioned so far is the fact that late fall I did find an answer for the question, “what are you majoring in?”. I read this essay called “Theater as Suture: Grassroots Performance, Decolonization and Healing” by two-spirit activist and educator Qwo-Li Driskill. This was around thanksgiving break. Since then the drive to pursue (or in fact return to) has been all consuming. My hope is to use theater as a connection to my people’s oral traditions, using it as a tool to teach culture, community unitfication, and as a method in connection within my person activism related work with youth.
I miss doing theatre, in particular technical work. I’ve been out of active professional theatre work for two decades, as much as it tore at my heart to do so. Too many years listening to people telling me because of opportunities I missed being growing up part of the foster care system, and not on the know with the right people, that someone like me had no chance in the industry. I am through listening to those people. I also hope to pursue a masters in Special Education and to use the theater training to teach my students emotional and physical freedom through self expression, and help them develop self pride, working against the labels and limitation placed on them by society as a whole.
Right now I am listed as an theatre education major. Though with the slow, agonizing death of art programs in MPS, and the absolute enjoyment I am experiencing in my Theatre Design class, I am thinking that it would be a good idea to take the advise of one of my professors and get my tech theatre degree first, seeking the theatre education as a post bachelorette study. My tech design prof has been really supportive., giving me extra challenges in class beyond what the other student are doing. Even though I’ve never been able to draw well, I admit my drawing has gotten better this semester. My hope is to take the theatre tech drafting class and a drawing 1 class this fall.
I’ve jumped back into activism work on and off campus (yeah, can’t keep me away from that) and as of next spring am the Peck school (the art/theatre/dance, etc campus) senate rep for UWM (one of two) I won’t bore you with the messed up stuff the past senate were doing and saying, and what led to them pissing me off enough to run for office. Folks that know mew well know I have little taste for politics, so yeah, they really had to have fired me up to challenge them in the political arena. :)
The 2009-2010 school year has been beyond exciting, even though I have done little to no fiction writing since fall began. I did take a creative writing course this semester and got to explore doing poetry again. I might post some of the work I have done in there if folks are interested. College has been a lot of work, frustrating and draining at times, but also very transformational.
I started college this fall, as many of you know, returning to education at the young age of 40. I’d wanted to go into ASL interpreting, but because of my Carpel Tunnel in both wrists I was advised by the woman running the program to look into another career path. I admit ASL was really hard, and I thought it was because I suck at learning languages (more LD frustrations), but I learned near the end of the fall semester from a couple of the ASL tutors that I had the hardest ASL professor in the department…would have been nice to know earlier in the semester, but I still made it out of the class with a C- (.13 away from a “C” man that sucked)
Beside the ASL class struggle, the rest of my fall classes went well. I have always floundered in science, but I made it through my natural science class (Plants in Today's World) with a A-, and got A’s in the rest of my classes (Grp Proc & Civic Engagement, Multicultural America, College Writing and Research. Even managed a A- in Communication 101 even though as a Winterim class the work load was like drowning in information for the whole several weeks of it. The Multicultural America class was amazing, though often I found myself way above the class discussion. It helped that the professor and I had our own side conversations outside the class. She joked many time about me being more like her TA than her student.
For the College Writing and Research class we had to write two essay for a portfolio that would go to a review panel to be graded. It was heartening when not only did my portfolio pass, but my professor sent me an email about how one of the judges urged that I submit one of my essay to the essay contest the run every year…the judge was the person who heads the contest. I did submit my essay, titled "Beyond Duality: Exploring Two-Spirit Identities Within North American Indian Culture and Their Ongoing Struggle for Acceptance in Contemporary Western Society." For the Virginia Burke essay contest. This April I was awarded 1st place in the English 102 category, and read a large chunk of my essay aloud to a ton of people I didn’t know. Scary!
The coolest part of the award ceremony was having all these professor come up to me and talk about how much my essay touched them, even inspired them. They seemed disappointed to learn I was not an English major as they had assumed I was. Wow. What wonders a few good editors can do *grin* Thank you Professor Schoeffel, and Professor Ogdun, and Professor Schumacher! I’d never won a real award for anything before, and the mind blowing part was on the way to the Virginia Burke event I pulled a letter out of the mail from the American Indian Student Services office announcing in two week I was being awarded for academic achievement and campus services. Sure, getting an award for my essay was amazing, getting recognition from the intertribal community was beyond words.
Now, what I haven’t mentioned so far is the fact that late fall I did find an answer for the question, “what are you majoring in?”. I read this essay called “Theater as Suture: Grassroots Performance, Decolonization and Healing” by two-spirit activist and educator Qwo-Li Driskill. This was around thanksgiving break. Since then the drive to pursue (or in fact return to) has been all consuming. My hope is to use theater as a connection to my people’s oral traditions, using it as a tool to teach culture, community unitfication, and as a method in connection within my person activism related work with youth.
I miss doing theatre, in particular technical work. I’ve been out of active professional theatre work for two decades, as much as it tore at my heart to do so. Too many years listening to people telling me because of opportunities I missed being growing up part of the foster care system, and not on the know with the right people, that someone like me had no chance in the industry. I am through listening to those people. I also hope to pursue a masters in Special Education and to use the theater training to teach my students emotional and physical freedom through self expression, and help them develop self pride, working against the labels and limitation placed on them by society as a whole.
Right now I am listed as an theatre education major. Though with the slow, agonizing death of art programs in MPS, and the absolute enjoyment I am experiencing in my Theatre Design class, I am thinking that it would be a good idea to take the advise of one of my professors and get my tech theatre degree first, seeking the theatre education as a post bachelorette study. My tech design prof has been really supportive., giving me extra challenges in class beyond what the other student are doing. Even though I’ve never been able to draw well, I admit my drawing has gotten better this semester. My hope is to take the theatre tech drafting class and a drawing 1 class this fall.
I’ve jumped back into activism work on and off campus (yeah, can’t keep me away from that) and as of next spring am the Peck school (the art/theatre/dance, etc campus) senate rep for UWM (one of two) I won’t bore you with the messed up stuff the past senate were doing and saying, and what led to them pissing me off enough to run for office. Folks that know mew well know I have little taste for politics, so yeah, they really had to have fired me up to challenge them in the political arena. :)
The 2009-2010 school year has been beyond exciting, even though I have done little to no fiction writing since fall began. I did take a creative writing course this semester and got to explore doing poetry again. I might post some of the work I have done in there if folks are interested. College has been a lot of work, frustrating and draining at times, but also very transformational.
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